Overview
- The Unified Patent Court's Düsseldorf chamber issued an injunction on July 23 that targets HEVC encoding, and InterDigital says that HEVC is central to delivering high‑quality 4K and HDR streaming.
- Following that court action, Disney+ has disabled 4K UHD and HDR playback across devices in Germany so even Premium subscribers now receive only 1080p and standard dynamic range.
- Disney told customers they can switch plans or request a pro‑rata refund for the affected billing period and said it is working to restore support but gave no timeline.
- Customer support and Disney help pages provided inconsistent information about the outage, and Verbraucherzentrale Niedersachsen has advised users to seek partial reimbursement and is considering legal steps.
- The dispute builds on earlier rulings and removals of Dolby Vision and HDR10+ in Germany and raises the risk that UPC‑level patent orders could force similar quality cuts in other EU markets.